Curse of the Asuune

Chapter 5

Mark drove his silver, four-door sedan down the quiet suburban street, searching for the house number his wife had given him. All the houses looked the same, and as he came up on the intersection for what must have been the fifth time, he realized he was on the wrong street. He put his car into park at the stop sign and pulled his city map out of the glove compartment. Jen would get a laugh out of this, they had a newer car with a GPS system installed, and her programmer husband couldn't figure out how to make the damn thing work. Mark looked up from the map for a second and smiled. Jen was everything he had ever wanted in a partner, but what if fate had never put them in the same professional writing class in college? Would he have met someone else? Maybe Sarah?

Sarah was just his type, physically, whereas Jen was not, and her personality was almost perfect. Many times he thought that Sarah and Jen got along so well because they were almost the same person, personality wise. The main difference was Sarah's flirty attitude towards people; Jen was always quiet and shy. As Mark thought about this, he wondered if Sarah's claim that she had just not met the right person yet was true. Sarah had a different lover every month, and her main argument for being so promiscuous was that she had yet to meet her 'Jen'.

If he had ended up with Sarah instead, would she have settled down and gotten married, had kids? This type of thinking plagued him a lot, mostly when he was heading home from spending the day with Sarah at work. It wasn't that he regretted being with Jen, he loved her and would never do anything that might hurt her. It was just that Sarah's pull on him was very strong, nearly as strong as his love for Jen.

Then Mark thought of Jen, her long straight blond hair, and tall thin body. Jen was almost five foot ten, only two inches shorter than himself, and she liked to wear heels. She always said it was so she didn't have to look up when she kissed him, and he accepted this as fact. Jen didn't have a big chest. With her thin body, it would look awkward for her to have big breasts, but they weren't small, and Mark liked them the way they were.

If it hadn't been for that one class in college, he would have never spoken to Jen, never even noticed her. He disliked women who were too thin as he put it. Fate, however, had a different idea. Jen often sat next to Mark in their writing class and would make silly jokes about the teacher not knowing what it was like in the real world.

Mark found Jen's sense of humor intoxicating, and eventually, they started talking. Within a few weeks they went on their first date. Mark had been on dates before, but they always went badly. With Jen, he found that he wasn't nervous. He had much he wanted to talk about with her, and it just felt right. In a few short months, they were engaged, five years later they had Kathrine. Mark again compared Jen and Sarah. Sarah might have been perfect for him physically, but so was Jen, just in a different way. Mark thought the both of them were absolutely beautiful. If anyone had asked Mark to choose who was prettier, Jen or Sarah, Mark would have said Jen, but deep inside, he knew it was too close to call.

A car honked its horn behind Mark, and he quickly snapped out of his daydream then turned right. He had been one block over this whole time. He must have passed the street he needed at least five times, but Jen knew he had trouble with city streets, even in the suburbs, so she would not be too upset that he was late.

Mark finally saw the house, though it looked very similar to all the other houses on the block, this one had a 'For Sale' sign in the yard. He also noticed Jen's car in the driveway with another car he didn't recognize, parked behind it. Mark eased his car up in front of the house and parked on the street then got out and walked up the sidewalk to the front door.

Was it necessary to ring the doorbell when your wife was already inside? It wasn't like someone lived there, they were meeting the real estate agent for a walkthrough. Truthfully, the walkthrough was just a formality, and Mark knew it, Jen had made up her mind that they were taking this house and he never refused Jen anything she wanted. Mark decided to err on the side of good taste and rang the doorbell, but no one answered.

After a few seconds, Mark rang the doorbell again and still no one answered. Mark started to get nervous, maybe he had the wrong house? Maybe someone had a car that looked just like Jen's? Slowly Mark walked toward the car that looked like Jen's and put his hand up to his eyebrows to look inside. It looked like Jen's, clean, the same interior, coffee in the cup holder but maybe someone else also liked coffee and a clean car.

On the front driver's side were important looking files with patient names and numbers on them. It had to be Jen's car. She was a hospital administrator and often took home files to work on while they sat and watched TV shows.

Mark could never understand how she could work and actually pay attention to the show, but somehow, she always knew what was going on. Many times he had assumed she was engrossed in her work, only to have her yell things like "Oh, come on! Why the hell would an obviously intelligent woman walk into that dark cave and not realize the monster is in there?!" or "That guy would kick the other dude's ass! How can the people casting this show not see that?! I mean, he'd snap that dudes neck in a heartbeat. Special powers, my ass!"

True, Jen was crude when they were alone, but this was one of the many things that made her perfect for him. What was even funnier was when Sarah and Jen got together. Mark had to sacrifice understanding anything about the show, but the conversations those two had were more interesting than the show was. Sometimes he thought they must be sisters.

Then Mark noticed it, the headphones attached to the cellphone in the back seat. Nervously, he opened the back door, hoping this wasn't someone else's car and picked up the cell phone. He swiped the screen, and it popped on. It said 'Kathrine Albet's phone. Don't Touch!' across the screen and he knew it was Jen's car for sure. Mark put Katie's phone back on the seat and shut the door. He did not want to let Katie know he had touched her phone. As much as he loved his little sweetheart, she was a teenager, the rules had changed.

Everything that was hers was off limits. Even looking at the screen could be grounds for an hour-long argument about how they didn't trust her. Mark felt bad that the distance between them seemed to be growing, but found comfort in the fact that Sarah was part spy and part aunt to Katie. The cool aunt, the one you can talk about s*x with, the one who would never tell your parents any of your secrets. At least he knew that if anything serious came up, Sarah would tell them, everything else was not their business.